The Body Sacred
Artist’s Statement.
As an Interdisciplinary Studies major, my work is the result of the integration between two disciplines: Applied Health Science and Art. In the process of creating what you see, I strove to find the common ground between the two, of which I believe there is a surprising amount. Two of the primary connections on which I built my thesis are that they deal with the body, and methods primarily include looking well and paying attention.
The painted portraits are friends of mine who were kind enough to sit for a few hours as I put their likenesses down on canvas (besides “The Waiting, the Welcoming,” which is depicts my grandfather in Colorado, half from photo references and half imagined). All were made out of deep love for the subjects.
As I spent time in the cadaver lab studying anatomy, my awe of the body only grew. It is frighteningly easy to lose sight of the humanity in the people we are dissecting; however, by dignifying them through art, I took the time to detail their interior features and recognize their unmistakably glorious humanity.
I hope my work inspires a kind of holy awe in your heart. May they tint your vision to see the bodies of your neighbors (as well as your own) as sacred beings, wonderfully made in God’s glorious image. Use them as a sign to take the time to pay attention to your neighbor in all their embodiedness.
Questions to ponder as you look:
What does a body in- and exclude, and what does it mean to have one?
What could it look like to honor someone’s bodily dignity by recreating their image? What does dishonor look like?
How does Christ’s incarnation change how we should view or treat our own bodies?.
Abby, oil on canvas, 18" x 18"
Ella, oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
Heather, oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
The Waiting, the Welcoming, oil on canvas, 48" x 36" // “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” ― C.S. Lewis
Maggie, oil on canvas, 18" x 24" // “The dance along the arteries The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars” –T.S. Eliot, Quartet No.1
“You must know, moreover, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body but established within it… But if death was within the body, woven into its very substance and dominating it as though completely one with it, the need was for Life to be woven into it instead, so that the body by this enduing itself with life might cast corruption off. Suppose the Word had come outside the body instead of in it, He would, of course, have defeated death, because death is powerless against the Life. But the corruption inherent in the body would have remained in it non the less.”
—St. Athanasius in On the Incarnation
Anatomical Illustrations
Our bodies are incredible works of art, intricate and mysterious parts of our essence as humans; but they are not always treated that way. The ways in which we depict the human body impacts the way we treat it and vice versa. It is healthy to regard the human body with holy awe, and these pieces, along with the portraits, are my attempt to do so.
Hand
“Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face… Love your mouth… This is flesh… Flesh that needs to be loved.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
Face
“Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,... O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!”
–Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric
Serratus Anterior (above)
“Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!” — Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric
Check out the written portion of this project!
“Both artistic and healthcare practices require a healthy dose of mystery, accepting the apparently paradoxical truths about human beings who are somehow body, mind, and soul all at once. Dignifying a person as a sacred being necessitates a relationship between physician and patient, as well as artist and model, and the acceptance of mystery.”
— Annika Van Dyke
Link attached
to image